Advantage or Supplement?
Six questions about your doctors, your travel and your budget. Tells you which side of the Medicare fork actually fits — and why.
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What does care actually cost?
The gap most people find in a hospital corridor. Here is what each kind of care runs in Arizona, what Medicare pays toward it, and what is left for you — with every figure editable, because medians hide a lot.
Estimated cost
Calculated in your browser from the figures you entered. Nothing is transmitted or stored.
Cost figures are medians from the CareScout Cost of Care Survey 2025, not quotes. Long-term care pricing varies more within a single metro than almost any other number in this field — two assisted living communities twenty minutes apart can differ by thousands a month. Treat these as a starting point and replace them with real local quotes.
What Medicare actually pays
This is the part that surprises people, usually at the worst possible moment. Medicare covers skilled care — medical treatment and rehabilitation delivered by licensed professionals. It does not cover custodial care, which is help with bathing, dressing, eating, using the toilet and moving around.
Custodial care is what most people actually end up needing, and it is what lasts years rather than weeks.
| Care | What Medicare pays |
|---|---|
| Help at home (custodial) | Nothing. Limited skilled home health only, and only while you need skilled care. |
| Assisted living | Nothing toward room, board or personal care. |
| Memory care | Nothing toward the residential cost. |
| Skilled nursing facility | Up to 100 days per benefit period after a qualifying hospital stay. Days 1–20 in full; days 21–100 at $217 a day to you. Only while you need skilled care. |
| Long-term nursing home | Nothing beyond that 100-day skilled window. |
Even the skilled benefit is narrower than it sounds. Coverage continues only while you need skilled care — if you stabilise and still need help but no longer need a nurse or a therapist, it ends, even on day 30 of 100. And the $217 daily coinsurance across days 21–100 comes to $17,360 on its own.
2025 medians
| Care | Arizona | National |
|---|---|---|
| In-home caregiver | $38/hour | $35/hour |
| Assisted living | $6,250/month | $6,200/month |
| Memory care | $7,800/month | — |
| Nursing home, semi-private | $8,365/month | $315/day |
| Nursing home, private | $11,437/month | $355/day |
Source: CareScout Cost of Care Survey, fielded 2025. Arizona figures are statewide medians; Phoenix-metro pricing varies considerably around them.
The three honest ways to handle it
- Self-fund. If several years of care would not derail the surviving spouse, this is a legitimate answer and sometimes the right one. What makes it fail is underestimating the duration and forgetting there are usually two people.
- Traditional long-term care insurance. Lowest cost per dollar of benefit; pays nothing if care is never needed.
- Hybrid life and long-term care. Pays for care if needed, a death benefit if not. Costs more, and removes the objection that stops most people acting at all.
Age and health drive both price and eligibility, and both move in one direction. Late fifties to early seventies, in reasonable health, is the window where this is most solvable — more in what Medicare doesn't pay for.
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Next step
Let’s look at your actual options.
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